Chapter 26
LUCA
I grunt as I push past Diego.
“Were you listening all night?”
“That’s my job,” he says easily, not missing a beat reading from his paperback.
I gather a towel and a fresh outfit. I’ve been living out of a suitcase, spending all my time between here and work. I haven’t been to my penthouse in a week.
I can’t say I miss it terribly. It’s never really felt like home to me, just a place that I escaped to when I was tired of Father and Nico. A place I brought women to, fucked them just for a night or two, then shipped them off.
The only place I truly feel at home is lying next to Sophia, but I don’t know if I’m ready to face that fact just yet, even in my own mind.
I run the shower in the master bathroom as hot as I can get it. This used to be my mother’s room, but when she got sick and had to be put in the hospital, my father had turned it into an office. A junk room, more like.
When she left, she took all the joy out of this place with her.
The hot water beating down on my wound makes me yelp, and Diego calls out to me.
“I’m fine!” I bark, gritting my teeth against the pain. Despite the discomfort, I wash and get out, drying off quickly and getting dressed casually in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. I’m not seeing anyone I need to impress. Not today.
“Where are you off to?” Diego asks when I walk into the hallway, freshly showered.
“To meet with Nico. To tell him everything that’s happened.”
Diego looks at me for a long moment, as if he wants to say something, but then he just nods.
“Watch your back,” he says quietly as I leave the cottage.
I groan as I slide into the leather seats because it pulls at my stitches. I hate being injured. It slows me down, and right now, I need to be quick witted.
At least I hadn’t taken another pain pill before I left. Those things make me tired and loopy.
What if I said something Sophia? She was acting strangely, kind of wired, like she was really worried about me talking to Nico.
But she doesn’t know him like I know him.
She looks at him and sees a gangster. I look at him and see a snaggle-toothed ten-year-old, grinning up at me, wanting to do everything his big brother does.
He wasn’t behind this attempted assassination. Maybe it was one of his dumbass friends, but it wasn’t him. He wouldn’t order me to be shot.
Diego seems wary, too, but Diego is wary of everyone. His military career hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing. He had his reasons.
But Diego and Sophia don’t know how our family dynamic works. Father bails Nico out. I’m the one who gives him consequences. And maybe it is too little, too late, but I don’t think Nico would have started an uprising.
He doesn’t hate me, he’s just…young and stupid. Like I was once. Well, maybe I wasn’t that stupid, but…everyone has their vices.
Nico just happens to have a lot of them.
I call my father and Cecilia picks up, her slow tone making me grit my teeth with annoyance.
“Hello? Luca?”
“Yes, Cecilia, it’s me,” I say in a clipped voice. “Is Nico around?’
“We haven’t seen him in days,” she drawls, the words drawing out because she’s fucked up on pills or wine or both.
“I’ll find him,” I promise.
“Oh, Luca,” she says, tone getting wobblier as she speaks. I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “That would be amazing. You two are still coming to dinner on Sunday, right?”
Dinner. Great.
I forgot entirely that I promised that.
“Yes, yes, of course, give my love to Father,” I say quickly, hanging up even as she starts to drone on again.
Nico has an apartment in the city, and I’ll bet he’s been holed up there since we got in that fight. I should have talked more than throwing my fists, but I was upset.
Nico and Alfonso had neglected a very important shipment, and Nico deserved the bloody nose I gave him. Surely he knows that.
I slide into the parking garage, taking the steps two at a time to Nico’s high-rise apartment. I bang on the door for what seems like half an hour before it creaks open slowly, still latched.
“Whozzit?”
Nico’s slurred words don’t exactly fill me with confidence about this conversation.
“It’s your brother. Let me in.”
He grunts. “Last time I let you in, you nearly broke my nose.”
His words seem a bit clearer now and I groan, pushing at the door.
“Just let me in, Nico. We need to talk.”
“Alright, alright. Hold your horses.”
He shuts the door and unlatches the chain and before he can fully open it, I push my way inside.
Nico squints at me in the dim lighting of his apartment, scratching his bare belly.
“You look like shit,” I say flatly.
He does. Bags under his eyes, smelling like tequila and cheap weed.
“Haven’t slept,” he barks.
“And whose fault is that?”
“Blame your supply, man, I don’t know.” He wipes a hand across the back of his nose. Crusted nostrils, like he’s been snorting coke for days.
“You’re not supposed to be dipping into our supply.”
He shrugs, chortling out a slow, chugging laugh.
“Yeah, well. They don’t call me ‘sticky fingers’ for nothing.”
I swallow hard and place my hands on his shoulders. He flinches but I just hold him there, steady, looking into his eyes.
“Nico, you have to get your shit together. Something’s going on.”
“Going on with what?”
He snorts and spits in the sink. Lovely.
I grit my teeth and pull up my shirt to show him the jagged scar and stitching. “Somebody fucking shot me, that’s what.”
His eyes widen and he looks genuinely surprised.
“Shit. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I say quickly, letting my shirt drop back into place. “But we have to find out who did it.”
“What’d he look like?”
I shake my head. “Dunno. He was masked. Drove a muscle car.”
“Diego drives a muscle car,” he says slyly, and I glare at him.
“You can’t possibly be suggesting that Diego is the one who tried to kill me.”
I think about it. Diego hadn’t been there. He’d been back at the cottage, watching Sophia. Or had he?
No. Diego wouldn’t betray me.
“Who else could it be? He’s the one who knows everything. Things you don’t even tell me,” Nico points out, and he’s right.
Diego does know everything. He’s the only one who does. He knew exactly where I’d be that night, and he moved fast, not slow and stupid like Nico’s friend.
“And you’ve been moving suspicious, anyway,” Nico says. I narrow my eyes at him.
“Suspicious how?”
“Spending all your time doing…whatever it is you’re doing at that cottage.”
The cottage. His words make me freeze, every muscle going stuff.
“How do you know about the cottage?”
Nico snorts. “How do you think I know?”
I grit my teeth, getting closer to Nico. He backs up against the wall, eyes wide and afraid.
“Alfonso told you?”
“Maybe he did.” Nico shrugs. “Fuck if I know. But all I know is somebody is spilling your secrets, brother.”
I move away from him and Nico relaxes.
“We’re having dinner on Sunday with Father and Cecilia,” I say, and Nico groans. “No excuses. You’ll be there.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
I leave Nico’s apartment with a purpose, speeding back toward the cottage as fast as the sedan I’m driving will carry me. It can’t be Diego. Nico is just spinning his wheels, hoping it isn’t one of his idiot friends who did it.
I tell myself to think about this, not to react, but the next thing I know I’m inside the cottage. It’s like losing time, like I blacked out.
I kick over Diego’s chair before I know what I’m doing and he lies there, flat on his back, looking up at me with wide eyes.
“What the fuck?”
“You did this,” I seethe, picking him up by gathering his shirt in my fist. He scrambles to his feet, pushing me away.
“Did what? Have you been doing coke with your shithead little brother?”
“Don’t talk about my family.” I shake him but he just stares at me incredulously.
“I’m your family, Luca. I always have been. You know that. You know this is Nico’s doing.”
“I don’t know anything anymore,” I mutter, but I let him go. Diego shakes his head, taking a few steps back.
“I’m not doing this anymore.”
“What are you talking about? Diego, look, I’m sorry. Nico—”
“No. I’m done with this, Luca. I’ve been your brother since I was fifteen, but you choose him over me, every single time. I’m the only one who’s been there for you ever since you kidnapped this fucking cop—”
“Don’t call her that.”
“What should I call her then, Luca? Huh? Your girlfriend?”
I grit my teeth and my hands turn into fists at my sides.
“You gonna hit me?” He bumps his chest against mine. “Try it, Luca. I fucking dare you.”
“I’m not going to hit you,” I plead, coming back to myself. Diego’s right. He’s always been my family. He didn’t do this, and I believed Nico over him without a second thought.
“That’s it. I’m done. You deal with that cop however you want to. Deal with your men however you want to. Wipe Nico’s ass for him until he’s forty, for all I care. I wash my hands of it.”
He storms out of the cottage, revving up his engine as he speeds away, and I curse and kick over the chair again. It’s useless, just like the rest of me.
Everything’s falling apart, and I’m just making it worse.